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On sideboards in the empty living-room: no ptyx, Abolished trinket of the resonant absurd, (For the master has gone to draw tears from the Styx With this sole object of which Nothingness is proud.)
“What I hear,” Marion said, “I can't write.” at age eight, Marion was in the second year of primary school and an academic failure. One after the other, her teachers had come up against the same problem. She was brilliant in oral communication, caught on quickly, and knew her lessons perfectly, but since beginning elementary school, she had been unable to write.
Born under X (in France, this is the designation given to children who will be put up for adoption) and adopted at the age of three months, Marion, according to her mother, had not had any problems until she had been asked to write. In fact, her teacher had noted her disinclination to make any marks on paper. Nothing was drawn on the sheet, no trace left there.
Marion's birth parents were of Malian origin. Her adoptive mother remembered being astonished when, at age three, Marion had begun to sing Malian lullabies. A friend, herself raised in Africa, had recognized them. Then the songs fell silent, at about the time when Marion's adoptive father